


breathe

by myticanlegends



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Anxiety, Coming Out, David is trying his best, Kissing, M/M, Matteo being Sad, References to Depression, Trans David, Underage Drinking, supportive friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-16 08:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18517525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myticanlegends/pseuds/myticanlegends
Summary: In which Sara confronts Matteo at a party and David reappears, ft. anxiety, breathing underwater metaphors, and everyone supporting Matteo no matter what.set somewhere in episode 3x07, where the boy squad doesn’t know about Davidchapter 2 posted





	1. Chapter 1

There’s always a party somewhere late at night when there is no school. Tonight it is at Leonie’s and almost everyone from school shows up so that they can drink themselves unconscious before the next exams. Matteo didn’t want to go.

But he’s making an effort now and Jonas had seemed so happy when Matteo had finally relented to leaving the flat. The rest of the boys seemed excited too, and teased him for the first time about flirting with some boys. They’d known for just under a week now, and Matteo couldn’t help but always smile when he remembers how positive they’d been about it. But he’s afraid it’d be different for them to finally see this side of him. And it’s different to act like he might want to be interested in boys compared to how long he had tried to pretend he wasn’t. He doesn’t want to meet a boy.

Matteo already met a boy and that hadn’t turned out right, and he doesn’t want to meet another. He’s already terrified that his friends will leave him even with how positive it might be now. Maybe it’s a calm before a storm. They think they’re okay with it now but what if he told them about David and they realize that leaving was the right idea too?

So naturally, David is the first he sees as he’s dragged into the room. David is talking to someone from advanced gym class, and he’s laughing, and his hair is a mess like it usually is, and Matteo can remember running his hands through it for hours and kissing those lips and laughing for the first time in months and how that hair had stuck up in the drawing that David had given him when he left in the morning while Matteo was sleeping, and god -- he didn’t think he could do this.

His breath was shuddering when he let it out, and he desperately needed a smoke. But he’d been trying to cut back lately with the help of Hanna and Jonas. After so long of them not being together, taking care of Matteo seemed to have banded them together again. Not together like they once were but… together. It was nice. For the first time in a while, it was just Jonas and Hanna and Matteo, but now there was an Abdi and Carlos too.

Sometimes he looked at the two of them, Hanna and Jonas, and felt like he could drown if he let himself. Hanna had forgiven him but… it was his fault they had broken up, wasn’t it? He had wanted them to break up. Jonas didn’t even know, and would he forgive him if he did?

The air felt thick around him. He couldn’t breathe. Here his friends were, dragging him to a party and trying to help him feel better, but they didn’t know anything he had done at all. He had ruined Jonas and Hanna. He had made Sara angry at him. His dad had left him, and his mom kept sending him bible quotes as if that would fix him even though she didn’t know what she was fixing or even that something was wrong. Carlos and Abdi tried but they didn’t know that he seemed to be ruining lives wherever he went. And David had never liked him to begin with. Or maybe he had, but decided he didn’t like him after all. Then he dropped off a note, and never explained. 

_ It’s not you, it’s me. _

Matteo had a hard time believing that. Maybe in a different universe.

No one seemed to notice that after five minutes, he disappeared into the background to sit by the wall and watch. The lights were dim, but Matteo could still see glimpses of people bathed in the blue patches of light from some party lamp. Carlos danced with Kiki, Abdi flirted with Sam, and Jonas was dancing with a girl from earlier. Girls, girls, girls.

Who cared about the boy sitting alone when there were girls?

There were only two people who seemed to notice him. 

One he wanted to stare at forever. He never wanted to see him again. Mostly Matteo wanted to cry, or throw things, or smoke a blunt. He wanted David to talk to him.

The other was Sara, with her hair frazzled from drink and leaning on Leonie with a laugh so loud it must have either been fake or she was entirely wasted. Perhaps it was both. Matteo couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Except she was approaching him now, loud and boisterous, and more importantly, determined. It had been weeks, and he had successfully avoided her since. But at a party -  _ Leonie’s _ party - confrontation was inevitable. He shouldn’t have come. Maybe, Matteo thought numbly, this is when everyone else will notice. The asshole in the corner with his ex gaining closer. This was the drama that school thrived off of.

“Matteooo,” she slurred, placing herself above where he sat, looking upset. Leonie almost looked apologetic as she tried telling her friend to take a deep breath.

“He doesn’t deserve your time,” Leonie was saying. She was right.

Matteo looked up at Sara blankly. Sara looked down at Matteo. For a moment it felt like the whole room quieted and all eyes were on them but when Matteo looked around, he only saw a few people had noticed at all. Carlos was nudging Jonas for his attention, both of them looking like they were seconds from striding over. Hanna was watching too, from her own corner, biting her lip nervously as Mia seemed to be assuring her he’d be alright. And David was watching, but he glanced away when Matteo caught him looking.

“I think,” Sara spat, pausing for dramatic effect or possibly waiting to make sense of her thoughts. “That you’re an asshole, and I deserve better than whatever you gave me! You were never there, and you were dismissive, and you wouldn’t even have sex with me and isn’t that what boys are supposed to do!? Think about sex all the time, and- I just can’t figure out whether it’s something wrong with me, or just something wrong with you,” She hiccuped, and then looked mad at herself for the sudden noise and then mad at Matteo but mostly, behind it all, she looked sad. Matteo knew that sad. 

She spoke again, every inch of her furrowed like a contradiction of a dragon ready to be unleashed or like a cat that wanted to curl itself away. “You never denied it.”

Although it felt like it maybe shouldn’t, after a week of not only not denying anything but talking about it as well, Matteo’s blood ran cold. Wrong place. Wrong time. But would there ever be a time in which he’d want to sit Sara down and explain every step he’d done wrong and how he’d done it all for nothing? Or how he had never really wanted her to begin with?

At the wrong time, Jonas and Carlos joined his side, with Kiki at her boyfriend’s side.

“Never denied what?” Kiki asked.

It only took a second, and a pointed look in between she and Leonie, but then Kiki said, “Oh,” like she knew, and Matteo stopped breathing entirely. Because it didn’t sound like a guess or a realization, it sounded like something that had been told before.

“Oh?” Carlos asked, turned towards his girlfriend. He sounded protective. Of Matteo.

“It’s just-” Kiki started, looking around the circle, a little desperately and a little confused. “Leonie told me that Sara thought that Matteo might be…”

“You told her what?” Jonas was immediately turning on Leonie.

“She didn’t say anything, did you, Kiki?” Leonie asked. Sara was still watching Matteo, and Matteo couldn’t move. He tried a breathing exercise in his head that a counselor had taught him once, awhile ago when his father had moved away and Matteo had started getting panic attacks when he was home alone with his mother.

One breath in… out. Second breath in… out. Then a third. Then a fourth.

“Besides, it’s not like he’s actually gay,” Leonie added, and Matteo couldn’t find his next breath again. Was he on his sixth breath? Or had he even been counting at all? He closed his eyes so that he couldn’t see Sara who was still staring like figuring out a puzzle, and leaned his head against the wall.

One… two… 

He lost track again, feeling that gaze on him and guilt for all that he’d never told.

One...

There was a hand on his knee. It was bigger than Sara’s but not as wide as Hana’s and smaller than Carlos or Abdi’s. Jonas was still arguing with Leonie about how you shouldn’t assume people’s sexualities to begin with and that just because Matteo didn’t want to fuck Sara didn’t mean he was gay. Matteo didn’t worry about that. He worried about the hand. He knew that hand.

When he opened his eyes, David’s dark eyes were a couple feet from his. If he was drowning before, suddenly there wasn’t a surface, and he desperately wanted to let out a breath but he remembered being in that empty swimming pool and finally releasing everything that had built up, and where that had got him. He had been happy there, and then happy no longer. He was getting to be happier now, without David’s help, but now he felt plunged back under.

“Matteo,” David said softly. Matteo couldn’t look away. “Follow my breath, yah?”

And then he let a breath out, like he’d done right before Matteo had kissed him, but less shaky and more confident. Matteo wondered how he could be so confident, even in the middle of a party, trying to talk Matteo out of a panic attack.

After a few examples of breathing in and out, and cautiously staring at David waiting for him to give up, Matteo finally let out a breath. And then another. And by the time he had brought himself back to the present, he realized everyone had stopped talking. They were watching him. Him and David.

He tensed, afraid they would run after seeing how much of a mess he could be, or afraid that how much he had loved and been hurt by David was written all over his face, and suddenly he felt all too seen. Jonas was looking between them, baffled, while Carlos grinned slightly, and Adbi seemed a little shocked. Kiki was staring. But what was worst of all was that Sara didn’t seem shocked at all, just sad. Maybe she had always been a little sad too.

“It’s true, isn’t it,” she finally whispered.

There was no point in denying it, but he’d been hiding himself for so long that he didn’t know how to let it out. But he was getting better. Matteo remembered telling Hans, and how it had been a weight off his shoulders, if only for a second, before every reason he had of telling him in the first place had been ruthlessly crushed. And then he remembered telling Jonas, and then the rest of his friends, and how that weightlessness had stayed.

He refused to look over at David. To see if he was watching, or to look for what David would want him to do or expect him to act, but he remembered David probably didn’t care. Or maybe he did. His hand was still on his knee, and he could feel him just as tense at his side.

Matteo took one more deep breath and then kicked towards the surface.

“Yeah,” he finally said, voice rasping from so long without speaking.

Sara didn’t even blink. Her lips just twitched downward, her eyes crinkling with a thin layer of water, and she let out a long sigh as if holding it in for a very long time. Still, her chin tilted upward proudly. “You were still an asshole.”

“I know,” Matteo said.

“Sara,” Leonie said, after a moment of silence. “Let’s go home.”

Sara didn’t look away for a long while. Matteo waited for her evaluation. There was nothing left to do but wait for the reckoning and accept it when it came. But in the end, she sniffled, looking dangerously close to tears, and then staggered away with the help of the other girls.

Immediately, Jonas was at Matteo’s other side with Carlos close on his heels. “Bro. What the fuck. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Matteo rasped out again.

“Who are you?” Abdi asked David, and David said, “David,” and then Jonas’ eyes snapped towards him and he asked, “Yeah, but how do you know Matteo?”

Matteo could feel David looking at him for an answer on what to say but Matteo couldn’t look at him again. Not without thinking about what it meant to breath underwater, or what it meant to feel so loved when someone would stay in bed all day with him when he felt alone.

“Geography,” David answered easily. 

It took Jonas looking at Matteo for confirmation, even though the idiot had met David under the pretense of Matteo knowing him from geography before, for Matteo to provide a different answer with a thin breath of air, “I cheated on Sara.”

“Ah,” Jonas said, looking between them. “With David?”

Matteo’s head fell back against the wall again as he looked to the ceiling. Anywhere but them. He felt shaky. They knew. They knew. They knew. And they hadn’t left.

“Shit,” Adbi said, almost sounding a little impressed. “You always did have more game than us.”

And then Matteo laughed. He goddamn laughed, feeling close to tears of both relief and fear and everything coming out at once. David hadn’t left so far either - hadn’t denied it.

“Does Sara know?” Carlos asked.

Matteo could only shrug. 

And then came the question, this time from Jonas: “So are you guys like a thing or…”

Out of all their awkward silences from the night, Matteo thought this was the longest. He could feel part of him threatening to pull him back underwater and his tears turning less relieved and more upset. He had told himself he wouldn’t be upset anymore. It was okay. He had his friends, and they were here for him, and they didn’t care that he was gay or that he had cheated on Sara and maybe they wouldn’t care about other things too. He didn’t need David with his perfect hair, and his cute smile that showed his gums if Matteo got him to laugh loud enough, or the doodle he had drawn him still left on his pillow. He wanted him -  _ god,  _ did he want him - but he didn’t need him.

Jonas looked close to apologizing for asking when Matteo finally mustered a, “No.”

When he finally looked down from the ceiling, David was staring at the ground. Matteo had never seen him look so close to tears. Was this was heartbreak looked like? Or was that a desperate hope that maybe things had meant something after all? Matteo could still see David’s hand on his knee, grounding him even when he had forgotten it was there, but it carefully slid away. If Matteo imagined hard enough, he could still picture it was there.

“I should go…” David said, moving to stand. “Matteo? Can I talk to you later? You can text me. Please… I just- I need to tell you something.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay, we were just leaving,” Jonas said immediately, standing up much faster and shooting Matteo a look that expected a thank you later, and also a wink, before making his excuses. “I need to tell Hanna you’re alright, she looks a little worried over there, and Abdi! That girl over there has been staring at you all night! We should introduce you. Carlos, you should come with.”

Within seconds and more coordination than Matteo had seen them possess before, the boy squad was gone, leaving David alone with him. David sat back down. They still weren’t making eye contact. Or at least, Matteo wasn’t making eye contact while David tried communicating with him through the sheer power of sad eyes and telepathy.

“Or I guess I could tell you now,” David said hesitatingly.

Matteo continued staring at the ceiling.

“Did you get my note?”

Nothing.

“Matteo…” David whispered, and he sounded so broken that there was nothing Matteo could do but meet his gaze, his head lulling against the wall to turn towards him. David was blurry. And then Matteo realized that he had been crying.

A hand reached towards his face to brush them away, the same hand that had been on his knee only moments ago, and Matteo let him because he didn’t have enough energy to fight something he missed so much. And then it stayed there, soft and cupping his cheek, and Matteo realized David was close to crying too.

“Do you trust me?” David asked.

No, Matteo almost lied. 

“Yes,” he said instead.

“Want to run away?”

Matteo had asked him the same question once, the day that they kissed, and it had the same potential now. The potential for sharing secrets and opening up to another person and never letting them go. And Matteo wanted to know every little thing about David, no matter how small and no matter how big, and it felt as if there was nothing he could say that could scare him away. That scared Matteo a little - the intensity of that feeling. He could see a little of that fear in David as well.

Maybe that was why David had run. But this time they’d run together.

He nodded.

When David took his hand, it felt like home.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a chapter for everyone who wants a second one.

It’s 21:21 and it’s quiet outside. It’s much more quiet than the party that Matteo can still see through a window as he and David exit the building, and the cold night air feels fresh against his face. He sees what Jonas means when he said how much better it felt when he stopped smoking too. Matteo doesn’t want to be numb.

There is no need to actually run, no pressure at all and no place to go, so they walk. He thinks David knows where they are going or that eventually he will say something to explain why he made Matteo into a heartbroken mess, but he doesn’t. They just walk.

But they find their way to that park that David had brought them to only a couple weeks ago and Matteo lets go of David’s hand. He still can remember David pulling away and how his face had turned away like he couldn’t really look at Matteo anymore. He should have seen it then that all of this was coming. The being alone thing — the why would anyone want to be with him thought that pushed at the back of his head.

But David grabbed his hand back and led him to a bench by the water. It was dark and the currents looked like they were dipped in starlight. Streetlights highlighted everything in yellow. In the bare light, Matteo could see the angle of David’s jaw and the caution in his eyes as he looked over at him.

Matteo looked down at his hands, his fingers twisted through David’s like a knot tying them together. They had done this before. It had been beautiful.

He could hear birds chirping nearby, saying their final goodnights, and David’s breath as it came out in a shaky sigh. His breath wafted into the air like a small breath of smoke, and Matteo reminded himself they weren’t high.

Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to this. Would it just be David breaking his heart for good? “Look, Matteo, you’re a nice guy but I’m just not ready for commitment right now”? Or maybe David just didn’t want to be outed either. Matteo could deal with that. He’d take what he could get, if only David wanted him.

“I-“ David started, then seemed to change his mind and rethink how he was structuring breaking Matteo’s heart again. He let go of Matteo’s hand, and rubbed his palms against his jeans like they were sweaty. Matteo hadn’t thought his palms were sweaty. They were warm and soft and Matteo wanted them back but didn’t take David’s hand again in fear of how this might end.

“I shouldn’t have sent that text message,” David finally decided on.

Matteo let that sink in a moment, then nodded, letting his immediate words slip out before he could consider the potential repercussions if he didn’t like the answer, “Did you mean it?”

He didn’t know what he would do if David said yes.

Luckily, there was barely a pause before David answered with a quick, panicked, “No! I never would have… I didn’t mean it, I just panicked, and I didn’t think you’d come to my house so-“

He didn’t finish his sentence, just watched Matteo a little desperately as if hoping he could glean the rest. Matteo was still watching his now empty hands.

He turned his head up to the stars and took a deep breath, preparing himself before he could ask, “Why’d you do it?”

His voice cracked and he could tell David noticed. But he didn’t say anything about it. For the longest time, David didn’t say anything at all, and Matteo was afraid of any answer that could come out of that long of a pause.

“I really, really like you, Matteo.” Suddenly came David’s shy voice.

Matteo couldn’t help but look over in surprise. David was watching him with that floppy hair, and a hesitant twist of his lips upward like he was trying for a smirk, and those expressive eyes. It was always those eyes that got to Matteo the most. In them, he could see his sadness reflected back at him, but it wasn’t his sadness at all. It was David’s. Everyone was sad tonight.

“But?” Matteo asked.

David cast his eyes down briefly but seemed determined to keep his gaze now that it had been met. His lips pursed. Matteo wanted to kiss them. He didn’t.

“I got so scared that you wouldn’t like me if you got to know me,” David whispered.

“Oh,” Matteo said, then added, “Me too.”

David huffed out a small laugh, his breath disappearing into the stars again, and Matteo wondered if their breath in the night air would become a cloud by morning. David was looking at Matteo with such emotion that Matteo couldn’t process it all at once. He would dissect it later, when laying in bed, and piece of out in its various layers. Fondness. Sympathy. Nervousness. Amusement. Dare he say it… Love.

“Why would I dislike you?” David asked, smiling with the pretense of teasing.

Matteo did not laugh. “Everyone leaves me.”

“You have your friends,” David reminded him, suddenly turning very serious. “They love you. They’d never leave.”

Matteo only shrugged. It only took one tip of the scale for him to be alone again. One small bit of pressure too much, too much relying on them, or too many times that he could snap at them and have them never return. His dad had never returned. And David… David had not been able to handle Matteo the moment he let himself open up.

He could see the moment that the realization occurred to David. He had left Matteo. Before this week, almost everyone else had too.

_Is it so bad to be alone?_

_Yes._

“I’m trans,” David said abruptly.

“Umm okay?” Matteo blinked. It seemed like such a strange turn from where he had thought the conversation might go, but important too, like David couldn’t hold on much longer without saying it. “Trans… gender?”

“Yeah,” David said. He bit his lip, and Matteo refused to track that action with his eyes. David seemed to be waiting for something. Matteo couldn’t look away. “Is that… okay with you?”

Matteo frowned, and then realized. This was what David had been afraid of, and Matteo hadn’t even recognized it as something to be afraid of at all. He thinks that maybe if he had thought that was a problem, Hans would have kicked him out of the flatshare a long time ago. He was still surprised Hans had let him stay after the whole coming out debacle, but sometimes Hans was more protective of his friends and the LGBT community than himself.

“Yah,” He answered. “Of course.”

If Matteo had been going through life holding his breath underwater until David, this was when David finally surfaced as well. He could see it in the way his shoulders loosened in a way Matteo had never seen before, and his smile reached his eyes for the first time that night, and they seemed to be filling up with tears of relief that Matteo wanted desperately to wipe away. Or kiss away. But there still seemed like there was a barrier between them that was dissolving all to quickly.

“I’m so, so sorry I hurt you. I didn’t want you to leave, but I said it anyway, because I thought you wouldn’t like me anymore if I told you. I wish I hadn’t,” David admitted with a strange sort of quiet. Vulnerable. His breath was shaky, and he was looking at Matteo like he didn’t have words for anything he was really saying at all.

They were both almost crying now, two boys alone in a park, but Matteo was the first to move. His hand swiped across David’s cheek like the other boy had done for him at the party, and he let it rest there even when there were no tears to wipe away. When he leaned forward, their foreheads rested together and he closed his eyes to collect himself in David’s presence.

When he opened them again, all he could see was David’s warm brown eyes and feel the comfort of secrets spilled into the nighttime around them. He was so close and impossibly warm. He was still David. David who was trans and beautiful and who was so afraid of being hurt that he’d turn people away before letting them in.

Matteo knew that feeling.

His hand slipped from David’s cheek and slowly ran its way through the back of his dark hair, pulling him even closer than before, and Matteo could feel David’s breath catch more than he could hear it. And then they were kissing, soft like the morning, and David was reaching for his hoodie to grab onto as if making sure Matteo would never leave.

There was safety in the dead of night and the consistent sound of the nearby river, but Matteo still forced himself to pull away. David blinked at him, silent and undemanding for a reason why, but Matteo gave him one anyway.

“The park,” Matteo said, and David immediately understood. He looked around at the dark silhouettes of playground equipment and the shadows of streetlights, shoulder still pressed into Matteo, before looking back at Matteo. Matteo didn’t demand an answer for why David hadn’t wanted to kiss him here before, but David gave him one anyway.

“I grew up near here,” David said, pressing his hand into Matteo’s once more. “My mom used to take me here to play with girls on the playground, and I never liked it. I was glad when we moved, but when I had to transfer schools and I ended up back here again, I thought I’d try to make better memories here. As me. But I guess… it reminded me of too much.”

Matteo’s heart squeezed and he squeezed David’s hand along with it, trying to convey sympathy with many words. He didn’t think he was all too good with words.

“But you’re good now?” He asked.

David smiled softly, slotting their fingers together and lifting them up between them so Matteo could see for certain how confident he was, with that little smirk that Matteo missed. “I’m good now.”

There was a pause. “Are you?”

Matteo wondered if he should tell David about his depression and about how there would always be lows even if nothing went wrong. Or how he had almost spent a whole week smoking and laying in bed after that text from David saying he didn’t want anything to do with him. Or if he should tell him how happy David made him, and how his life hadn’t looked this positive in a long time.

But it was too much pressure. He would tell him another day.

“Yeah,” Matteo answered honestly.

And then David was grinning and pressing a quick kiss to Matteo’s lips before escaping away, and Matteo was laughing and chasing him through the park.

Even now, he could tell that everything was going to turn out okay.


End file.
